


Companionship

by CastleriggCircle (BanjoOnMyKnee)



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Abbie Lives, F/M, Fix-It, Happy Ending, I reject canon's reality and substitute my own, Sleepy Hollow Season 3 Finale Spoilers, Wedding Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-06-03 04:23:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6596533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BanjoOnMyKnee/pseuds/CastleriggCircle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I refuse to accept that Abbie Mills is dead. And I wish we'd had several more seasons of Nine (because you never forget your first Doctor).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Abbie Mills didn’t feel dead. At least, the way she understood it, the afterlife was supposed to be heaven or hell—either utter bliss with all hurts healed, all the loved ones and ancestors who’d gone before there to welcome you, or else unending torment. Not waking up in a strange place with a splitting headache, a shoulder stiff from lying on a hard floor, and an overwhelming sense of disorientation.

Lying on the floor, OK. What floor? Where the hell was she? She shifted to ease the strain on her shoulder, rubbed her eyes, and tried to make sense of her surroundings. Best as she could tell, she as inside some kind of dome, dimly lit, all bronzy-brown metal sculpted in curves. In the center, a glowing, pulsing blue-green core. She shut her eyes against its brightness and rolled to her other side. What was this place? It didn’t look manmade, but it didn’t look natural, either? And it sure didn’t look like anything supernatural she’d ever seen, but you never knew.

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

An English voice, male and…well-intentioned, if a bit impatient in tone. But not Crane’s. Nothing like his. Totally different accent. Crane probably could’ve identified exactly what county he’d come from, but all Abbie could say was that the speaker wasn’t all Oxford-posh.

She sat up and twisted toward the voice. A man in a leather jacket sat on the floor six feet or so away. A careful distance, she recognized. Close enough to observe, but not wanting to look like a threat. She assessed him, aware he was doing the same to her, like she was just as much a mystery to him. This was so strange. Why wasn’t she dead? Or if she was, where her mother and Grace Dixon, the Corbins, and the rest? She’d been a good Witness, hadn’t she? Shouldn’t they be there to welcome her?

 _Focus, Mills._ The stranger was tall, skinny, and blue-eyed, but beyond those superficials not a bit like Crane. He wasn’t handsome, at least to her eyes, but she didn’t think anyone could forget his face, all angles and strong planes that matched the intensity of his expression. And she kinda coveted that leather jacket of his, even if it would be way too baggy on her smaller frame.

Covet. Could the blessed dead break the Ten Commandments? What was going on?

Start with the obvious. Her breath, her beating heart, her ordinary living human aches. “It didn’t work,” she said. “I’m not dead.”

The man frowned. “You meant to kill yourself, then? Why? Your kind of life is short enough without helping it along.”

 _Your kind of life._ What did that mean? He looked as ordinary living-human as she felt. “It wasn’t suicide,” she protested. “I had plenty to live for.” No matter what she’d tried to tell Crane in that dream-vision or whatever it was so he’d feel able to move on without her, that was the truth. “But I did it to save the world.”

He cocked his head, considering. “Well, the world’s still there. So that part worked, at least.”

That was a comfort. She nodded and touched her chest. She felt…different…in some way she couldn’t quite put into words. A certain restless spark that she’d had ever since she and Jenny had seen that vision in the woods all those years ago was just _gone._ She blinked against sudden tears. “Think I lost a piece of my soul, though.”

Her companion looked away, into the glowing center of the room. “Battles…they do that to you, sometimes.”

He’d seen his own troubles and made his share of sacrifices, Abbie saw. “It was an important piece,” she said sadly. 

“Perhaps you’ll find it again, in time. Or it’ll grow back.”

“No. It’s gone.” And who was she, without it? If she saw Crane again, would they be like strangers, or just acquaintances, their bond transferred to whatever relative of hers who’d picked up her Witness-soul?

“Well, you’re not gone,” this stranger said. “And the TARDIS—this ship—was the one who pulled you out of that explosion and saved your life. When she takes it in her head to take charge of a mission, I trust her judgment. So it must be it’s not your time to die yet…whoever you are.”

Ship. She didn’t think he meant a boat, and they sure weren’t rocking like they were on water. What. The. _Hell?_

Time for introductions. To be immediately followed by explanations, if she got her way. “Abigail Mills. And you are?”

“The Doctor.”

“Doctor who?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’d told her he was the last of the Time Lords, and she’d gotten the sense that the loss was a recent one, at least as he measured time. And…yeah, even if she couldn’t go home she didn’t want to be completely alone. Never again. She nodded. “OK. We’ll go on a road trip through space and time.”

For the next half hour or so, they tried to explain themselves to each other. The Doctor—for that was all the name he seemed to have—claimed to be an alien, though Abbie couldn’t help suspecting that he was some kind of god or demon. And when she told her story, he commented that the demons, gods, and witches she’d battled might well be aliens. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” he pronounced.

“Clarke’s third law,” she commented. When he looked surprised, she raised an eyebrow. “I do read science fiction.”

“I’m happy to hear it. One hopes it will enable you to accept science fact.”

“I do. But I also know demons are real.”

“If you say so. But I promise you, I’m not one of them.”

She raised an eyebrow, Crane-style. “If you say so.”

“Whatever you decide I am, I mean you no harm—saved your life, didn’t I?”

“I thought you said your ship did that.”

“And I’d never anger her by hurting someone she takes it in her head to save. She’s not always so kindly disposed to my traveling companions.”

On a ship…traveling companions…Abbie shook her head. “Can you show me the ship? I mean, the outside of it.”

“Of course. Not that I’d recommend it if we were in space, or on a planet with a poisonous atmosphere, but here you’ll be fine.” He stood and extended a hand to help her up. After a moment, she let him. Strange as the Doctor was—strange as the whole situation was—her instincts told her to trust him.

He led her to a door, opened it, and gestured her out. But she hesitated, shivering from startling wintry cold and squinting at the painful brightness of snow and ice in full sunlight.

The Doctor shrugged, stepped out into the icy expanse, and extended his hand to her again. “Come on. It’s perfectly safe.”

Safe from everything but hypothermia and frostbite, maybe. She took a gingerly step outside, bracing herself against the door frame. She wasn’t dressed for this. “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Sleepy Hollow anymore.”

“Oh, but you are!” the Doctor said with a manic grin. “At least, you’re where it will be in another 22,000 years or so. After we picked you up, I took us back to Earth’s last glacial maximum. Perfect place to park the TARDIS when I don’t want to be disturbed.” He gave her a smug look. “Did I mention it travels in time?”

Abbie affected a calm she didn’t actually feel. “Been there, done that.” She’d told him that part of the story…and now that she thought of it, he hadn’t been anywhere near as startled or disbelieving about her trip to 1781 as she’d expect from anyone other than Crane or Jenny.

He scoffed. “Centuries, not millennia. And we should get you inside before you freeze. But, here—look at the TARDIS.”

So she turned her attention from the glacier to the ship she’d just emerged from—and gaped to discover an ordinary-looking blue box not much bigger than the phone booths that had still been around when she was a kid. How was that even possible? “It’s…much smaller on the outside.”

“Mm-hm.”

She read the inscription over the door. “Why does it look like a police box? Whatever that is.”

“Mm, that’s right, you never had them in America. You see, it’s intended to camouflage itself to go unnoticed in its surroundings—”

“Shouldn’t it look like a snowdrift or an igloo, then?”

“—but it got stuck in this form. I could fix it, but I rather like it.”

She was starting to believe he was exactly what he said. “So you’re an alien, and this is your time-slash-space ship.”

He nodded, shooing her back inside. She allowed him—her nose and ears were already starting to sting. “Do you believe me enough to eat something now?” he asked.

He’d offered her before, but she’d refused, remembering Purgatory. “Yes,” she said.

***

The TARDIS kitchen looked, well, normal, compared to anything else she’d seen of the ship so far. Human, even, though the fridge was a bit more advanced than anything she’d seen at home. Maybe the Doctor had picked it up on a trip to, oh, 2025 or 2030?

The coffee, too, tasted entirely normal, more like the old-school diner coffee she used to drink with Sheriff Corbin than the fancy lattes Crane had grown so fond of. And when the Doctor offered her anything she wanted to eat—“whatever you’re craving, the TARDIS likely knows how to provide”—she asked for rice pudding like she used to get at the lunch buffet at Shalimar Garden back in college. It was the most soothing and comforting food she could think of that reminded her of neither Crane, Jenny, Mama, Corbin, Danny, or anyone else close to her heart. The TARDIS version tasted perfect, too, like the dessert she remembered but just a bit richer and tastier.

“So what now?” she asked once she had enough caffeine and sugar in her system that her headache was starting to ebb.

The Doctor took a bite from his own bowl of pudding and shrugged. “Depends. Where do you want to go?”

She took a deep breath and spoke of the hope that had been building within her ever since she’d accepted that the TARDIS had taken her all the way back to the Ice Age. “This is a time machine, you said…”

“Yes…”

She lifted her chin and looked him straight in the eye. “Then I want to go back and fix things.” Surely with foreknowledge, she and Crane could find a way to stop Pandora and the Hidden One short of offering her life. She could even avoid that harrowing, endless imprisonment in the Catacombs. Hell, why stop there? If she and Crane hadn’t lost touch those nine months while he was traveling and she was at Quantico…or, keep going, if they’d known from the start who and what Henry was, or Katrina’s great potential for evil magic…

But the Doctor shook his head. “No. You can’t undo your own history. You’d create a paradox, a wound in the fabric of time itself.”

Abbie didn’t doubt his words. He’d told her he was the last of the Time Lords, and with that haunted look in his eyes…he had his own history he’d remake if it only he could. “That’s a bitch,” she commented.

“Too right.”

She pushed at the remnants of her rice pudding with her spoon. “So…what’s the point of this, then? Of me being here?”

He studied her through narrowed eyes. “Note that you could go back home to a point _after_ your late not-quite-death. No paradoxes to worry about there.”

She bit her lip. What would happen if she just popped back, a few minutes after she’d gone, still herself, but no longer a Witness? They’d all be overjoyed to see her—she was sure of that much—but would she still belong? “I don’t know if I’m meant to,” she said. “I’m not a Witness anymore. What would my purpose be, there?”

“Thought you were full of reasons to live.”

“I was. I am.” She didn’t regret for a moment that the TARDIS had rescued her. “But that’s not the same as having a purpose there. With _them._ ” With Crane, she realized she meant. What if their bond had only been a connection between their linked Witness-souls? What if going back to Sleepy Hollow meant she’d have to watch him with the new Witness, all that adoration and connection focused on _her?_ Leaving Abbie on the outside. Alone like always.

Or not quite alone. She’d still have Danny. But now, too late, she could see with breathtaking clarity that she’d never loved him half as much as she loved Crane. He’d been a distraction. A very sexy one, but still.

Mercifully, the Doctor didn’t ask her to explain any further. “Then you can stay on the TARDIS for awhile. Be my Companion.”

She could hear the capital letter in his voice. And she might be lost without her Witness-soul, but she wasn’t quite ready to rebound into another pseudo-mystical partnership with another weird British man. British alien.

Assuming it really was pseudo-mystical. A capital-C Companion could just as well be something a lot more earthy. “And what are the duties of a Companion?”

He drew back and looked down his long nose at her—suddenly reminding her quite a bit of Crane. “I’m not looking for a sex slave or a caretaker, so stop looking at me like that,” he snapped.

“Well…Companion. It’s vague. And also loaded.”

“Traveling Companion, then,” he clarified with an exasperated sigh. “So neither of us has to be entirely alone while we…sort ourselves out and work out just what our purposes are now.”

He’d told her he was the last of the Time Lords, and she’d gotten the sense that the loss was a recent one, at least as he measured time. And…yeah, even if she couldn’t go home she didn’t want to be completely alone. Never again. She nodded. “OK. We’ll go on a road trip through space and time.”

He grinned. “Fantastic! Where do you want to go first?”

She considered. All of time…all of space…too many choices to cope with at once. “Since we’re here in the Ice Age already…show me a mastodon.”

Half an hour later, he did. A whole herd of them, actually. She took pictures on her phone, vaguely imagining herself showing them to Crane someday. If she could ever bring herself to go back.

“Where next?” the Doctor asked as they stepped back into the TARDIS.

With even a little more time to consider, she was starting to develop a list. “Ancient Egypt,” she said. “I want to see the Pyramids when they were new.”

They spent several days there, with Abbie in the role of a Kushite priestess visiting the temples of Bastet and Horus and the Doctor as her barbarian bodyguard from an strange and distant land. Which…wasn’t entirely a lie.

It was wonderful. Abbie took pictures there, too, when she was sure no one was looking. Of temples and pyramids in all their original grandeur, but also of reed-boats on the Nile, of children playing in the fields in the cool of the evening, and of herself looking more elegant than she ever had in her life, gowned in sheer white linen, gold and lapis lazuli at her throat and shining in her hair, her eyes outlined with kohl. If Crane could see her now…

She had to stop thinking like that. But when it was over and she was back in her own room on the TARDIS, she started a journal on her phone, telling him everything she’d seen and done. Maybe she just needed more time, to get him out of her mind.

And she had it. All of time and space, laid out before her like a banquet.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abbie keeps traveling...and begins to find herself again.

At first Abbie’s travels with the Doctor were an endless, impossible vacation. She danced in jazz clubs during the Harlem Renaissance and made sure to get a good picture of herself in a particular red dress, slinky and beaded. In case she ever wanted to show it to anyone. 

She saw a salmon run on the Columbia River before it bore that name, before Lewis and Clark ever set foot in the West. She visited Easter Island when its statues were being raised. And she stood in the throng before the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 and felt her eyes sting with pride and heartbreak to hear King speak of his Dream.

Because the Doctor was an alien and the TARDIS navigated space as well as it did time, he made sure she saw stars being born and exploding into supernovae when their time was done. The latter gave her a strange chill she didn’t try to explain to her companion. He took her solemn mood to be fretting over mortality in general, and the eventual end of her own star and its planets. And she let him, because she knew he’d think she was crazy—as crazy as he was—for thinking of herself as like that dying star, exploding herself in a final grand bright sacrifice only to find she still lived on, somehow, but changed. Diminished.

Yet her will to live was as strong as it ever had been, and traveling with the Doctor kept her restless uncertainty at bay. Who needed roots when you could visit dozens and dozens of planets, some practically twins to Earth, others so different it was hard to believe they came from the same galaxy? No time to dwell on your past and all the things you wished you’d done differently when you were trying to wrap your mind around alien art and music and cuisine—at least, those parts of it the Doctor promised wouldn’t poison her. 

Sometimes they stopped back at her home time, but never her home _place._ The Doctor loved England, and an ocean away was as close to Sleepy Hollow as Abbie wanted to get. And while it was nice to see familiar names in the news and catch up on her favorite shows without having to wrestle with the TARDIS’s systems to extract them from the ether, she never let them linger long.

She was all but twitching with restlessness to get _away_ one afternoon as they sat in a London pub eating fish and chips and plotting an excursion to the Branlypor Festival on a planet called Lon’eltscha—at least, that was closest Abbie could come to pronouncing it. But then she was arrested by a voice at the next table, deep, melodious, and Oxford-posh.

It wasn’t _him._ Of course not. But the voice was close enough to trigger a sense memory that purred pleasantly from her ears all the way down her spine. She glanced over the shoulder, assuming that would be enough to dispel the illusion when the voice’s owner turned out to be, say, five foot three, blond, and tubby. But as her bad luck would have it, the stranger could’ve passed for Crane’s cousin, or even his brother. No beard, not quite as skinny, and the look on his face was open, cheerful, and relaxed as Crane’s never quite was. But almost the same blue eyes—a little grayer, maybe—the same wavy brown hair laced with gold, the same ruddy cheeks. The same kind of features, too. High forehead, narrow chiseled nose.

She stared for just a bit too long, and the man noticed. He frowned and seemed about to speak, so Abbie beat him to it. “Sorry. You just reminded me of someone I used to know.”

She swiveled away before he could reply and distracted the Doctor by stealing one of his chips. A few minutes later, the man and his friends left the pub, and Abbie carefully stared at her plate until they passed.

The Doctor deftly snagged Abbie’s last piece of fish. “That fellow looked like _him,_ didn’t he?”

She shrugged but didn’t deny it. “Quite a bit.”

“Mm. Classic English aristocratic type, a bit overbred, but eye-catching. Wouldn’t mind having that sort of look, one of these regenerations.”

Abbie chuckled. She knew about the Doctor’s strange transformations, but she couldn’t imagine him with any face but the one she knew, all rawboned, stark, and intent. “Maybe if you close your eyes and think really hard about aristocratic Englishmen when the time comes…”

“Ha. Much too risky. I could overdo it and come out looking more Prince Charles than Prince Harry.”

They grinned at each other in perfect harmony. This, Abbie reflected, was what a really close platonic friendship actually felt like. No sparks, no pounding hearts and racing breaths, no thrills and frissons of arousal you had to hide and deny as best you could because at first the object of them was married, and then he up and left you for nine months without a word. Just…friendship. Trust, and a shared appreciation for both the amazing and the ridiculous. As uncomplicated a friendship as an ordinary Earth woman could have with a hyper-intelligent, centuries-old, time-traveling alien.

“You ought to go home and check in on your antique aristocrat, one of these visits to the late twenty-teens,” her alien commented.

“Trying to get rid of me already, Doctor?” she said, but only because she was sure that wasn’t it.

“Not at all. You’re good company. You love to explore and you hate to complain. But you’re never going to be fully happy, in this life or any other you might make for yourself, until you close that loop. With him.”

“Or it could just make everything worse.”

“Abbie.” She looked up, startled by his sudden harsh tone. “He thinks you’re dead. Is that fair to him?”

She blinked and shook her head. “But he does have closure. He must’ve met the new Witness by now. They don’t need their peace disturbed.”

“Doesn’t sound like you lot ever had peace,” the Doctor muttered, but forbore to press her further.

And when they’d finished their meal they returned to the TARDIS as planned and headed off to the Branlypor Festival, 500 years and 5000 light years away.

It was supposed to be a peaceful event, a sort of galactic Olympics of the arts, complete with a truce among the participating planets just like with the city-states at the ancient Greek Olympics. (Which Abbie mentally added to her list of must-visits, though if she recalled correctly there were rules against women spectators they’d need to find a way around.) But during the finals of the theatrical competition, when the prop weapon one of the actors carried turned out to be the real thing, and he aimed it a the prime minister of Lon’eltscha, Abbie’s police and FBI training kicked in. Without stopping to think twice, she leapt onstage, wrestled the seven-foot alien to the floor, and disarmed him.

“I knew you didn’t have it in you to stay a lady of leisure for the rest of your life,” the Doctor told her as they stepped aboard the TARDIS after receiving the thanks of a grateful planet.

“I guess I don’t,” she said slowly. She’d wondered, these past few months, if everything about her that had been a fighter, that had driven her to take risks for the sake of justice and peace, had been her Witness-soul at work. Yet now…something in her had come back to life. It wasn’t the Witness-soul returning—that couldn’t be reclaimed. But whatever it was, whatever powers that extra shard of a soul had given her, whatever bond it had forged with its partner-soul in Crane, it hadn’t been her driving core.

“I’m still myself after all,” she told her journal that night. Then—she had to laugh at herself, but it felt appropriate—she quoted Tolkien. “Not all those who wander are lost.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Abbie gets an unexpected job offer, and makes a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope I'm not playing too fast and loose with Doctor Who's quote-unquote timeline and continuity here, but UNIT felt like such a good fit for Abbie...so, uh, wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey?

On the surface, nothing changed after the incident at the festival. Abbie and the Doctor kept traveling, taking turns selecting their destinations. Many of those destinations remained peaceful and idyllic. She knew she’d always treasure the memory of a week spent lounging on a blue-sand beach beside a purple sea, with nothing to do but sip cocktails beneath the planet’s two suns and read George R.R. Martin’s latest—picked up from the new releases table on a trip to Edinburgh in 2020—and a nice sexy romance trilogy with no death or dismemberment in sight for a palate cleanser.

Yet increasingly trouble seemed to find them wherever they went. On Earth and around the galaxy, in the past, present, and future, Abbie and the Doctor prevented wars, solved mysteries, brought not-quite-human criminals to justice, and blocked alien invasions.

After once such incident in London in the autumn of 2017, Abbie and the Doctor were invited to a private dinner by Kate Stewart, who’d led a group of scientists who’d contacted the Doctor for assistance. Abbie had been unclear on just who they were during the immediate crisis of preventing a newly hatched clutch of Adwarna eggs in a disused section of the Underground from breaking out into the Piccadilly line and devouring the morning commute in their mindless hunger. But now she learned all about the Unified Intelligence Taskforce—UNIT—and its role in defending the planet from extraterrestrial and paranormal threats. 

“If at any point you find yourself ready for a somewhat more settled existence,” Stewart said with a sidelong glance at the Doctor, “UNIT would be delighted to offer you a post, Ms. Mills. I was most impressed with your quick thinking and courage this morning, and with your police and FBI training coupled with your experience traveling with the Doctor, you bring unique qualifications.”

Oh. Abbie hadn’t been expecting a job offer. She took a careful sip of her wine as she considered how to respond. To give up the TARDIS, to leave behind the freedom of the galaxy, the delicious thrill of never knowing what would come next, the easy camaraderie she shared with the Doctor…all that was a true sacrifice. She’d miss this impossible road trip of a life. And yet she’d never been a wanderer at heart. Sooner or later she’d have to settle on what home meant for her now and go there. “I’m intrigued,” she said.

Stewart smiled. “Good. As an American, a New Yorker, even, your most natural posting would be Manhattan, but you would certainly be welcome here in London if you prefer. And since Grace Abigail Mills is legally dead—your FBI files make for fascinating reading, by the by—the simplest course might be to create a wholly new identity for you.”

It was tempting. A very little bit. But if she was going to rejoin her own timeline, she didn’t want to do it as anyone but herself. “I have a sister,” she said slowly. “A father, and…a dear friend. If I do this, I want them to know I’m alive.”

“You’re ready to go back, then,” the Doctor murmured.

“I am.”

“In that case I’m certain we can come up with some plausible explanation for your resurrection,” Stewart said briskly, and their talked turned back to the Adwarna eggs and just how they’d gotten into an abandoned Tube station in the first place. 

As Abbie and the Doctor were leaving after dessert, Kate Stewart pressed an overstuffed folder into Abbie’s hands. “Should you accept, here is what we can offer you. Do let us know if you need more information.”

To Abbie’s bemusement, it was a fairly standard HR info packet. Pay grades, opportunities for advancement, mission statement, code of conduct, all the perks. For the American base, health insurance options and info on the 401(k). For everyone, generous disability and death benefits.

“What do you think?” the Doctor asked as they stepped into the TARDIS.

It felt right. “I think I’ll take it.”

“London, or Manhattan?”

She hesitated. Part of her wanted to say London. She could email Crane and Jenny. Let them come to her, if they chose. But she knew where her home was. An easy train ride from… “Manhattan.”

“Thought so.”

He had that smile he got when he was especially pleased with his own cleverness. “You look smug.”

“Been traveling with you for over a year, now. I know you. You’re brave enough to face down your own past.”

“Yes, I am.” At least she was now. “And speaking of, before I take this job, there are two more places I’d like to visit.”

***

Thus far Abbie hadn’t sought out any of her own ancestors or tried to contact prior Witnesses. But she’d been curious enough to do the research, which the TARDIS allowed her to do with more power and certainty than she ever could’ve managed with human resources alone. 

Now she wanted to connect, and she chose an ancestress who had been noted as especially illustrious, both as a Witness who battled evil and as an advisor to kings. The TARDIS took her and the Doctor to Timbuktu in the year 1325, and while he stayed behind to repair the ship, Abbie sought an audience with the woman who’d been dubbed Wisest of the Wise.

The wise woman proved as ancient as her title suggested, though she still stood tall—much taller than Abbie, anyway—and regal. And somehow there was something familiar about her eyes. 

“Well!” the woman said with a delighted laugh. “Granddaughter of granddaughter’s granddaughters. Witness that was, and has not yet been. Last week I had a vision that I would meet you, but I couldn’t understand how it could be, outside of a dream. Why have you journeyed so far out of time?”

“You know me,” Abbie said.

“I have the sight to see. As you well may, should you live another fifty years.”

“But I’m not the Witness anymore. I…had to sacrifice that.”

“Oh, I see that too.” She reached out a slender hand to touch Abbie’s cheek. “Snatched from the very teeth of death to see more than any of your lineage has yet beheld. There are a few battles only a Witness can fight, yes, but a great many more anyone with courage and heart can join. And all the women of our line have an affinity for magic and seeing those powers which are invisible to most of the world. None of my daughters will be the Witness when I am gone—that spirit is not passed so directly—but all of them are strong and worthy. As are you. But you’ve already learned that, haven’t you?”

“I have. Still…I think I wanted your blessing, before I go home. What I’m doing—going on living after losing the Witness-soul—should be impossible.”

“And yet it is not, for you are here.”

Abbie couldn’t argue with that. She stayed for dinner, which turned into a feast with all of her distant ancestresses and cousins who happened to be in the city then. She learned much of Witness-lore, of the demons their ancestresses had vanquished down through the centuries. In turn her family exclaimed to hear that the two Witness lineages had been reunited—as best as Abbie could tell, it sounded as if they’d been driven apart at the destruction of the Tower of Babel. To have them together again must surely bring power that was the stuff of legends…so Abbie told them some of what she and Crane had done together, wondering anew what she would be to him that that she was only an ex-Witness. No, uniquely an ex-Witness. She had survived much and been granted a life like no other. Whoever she was to Crane now, she was at peace with who she was to herself.

For her very last trip with the Doctor, she went to Philadelphia, July 8, 1776. The first public reading of the Declaration of Independence.

“Why?” he asked as they walked through the crowd after the reading was completed, both of them impeccably garbed to blend into the 18th-century throng. “It’s boiling hot, and surely you lot learned all this in school. Rebellious colonials.”

“Sh. Stop talking like you’re Englishy McEnglandFace when you’re not even an Earthling. Do you want to start a brawl? And it’s one thing to read about it, another to actually be here. _We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,”_ she sang softly. “Besides, I have other reasons.” She’d spotted an achingly familiar tall figure some twenty yards away, and she tugged at the Doctor’s elbow, angling them to be sure they would meet each other.

Over a year apart, and faced with a Crane she knew damn well wouldn’t know her, and it was _still_ hard to keep herself from running to him. But she steeled herself to be calm, to look at him for just long enough to draw his attention without seeming to stare.

He saw her, gave her the polite look of a friendly stranger, with just a touch of lingering, appreciative male gaze—the simple blue dress _was_ very flattering—then touched his hat and passed by.

“Him,” the Doctor said simply.

“Yes.”

“But why here and now, when you’re going back to the him who actually knows you?”

“I wanted to see him in his world one more time, because I could. To remind myself how far he’s come. And because if I’ve seen him meet me as a complete stranger, I can handle however he sees me when I get back.” Even if their bond wasn’t what it had been, he’d know her. He’d remember. 

And friendship was a worthy thing all on its own. If she couldn’t have more, if it was too late for that, well, she was Lieutenant Mills of UNIT now. She had purpose and to spare. She reached for the Doctor’s hand. “Take me home.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abbie returns to Sleepy Hollow (and this fic finally earns its M rating)...

Abbie hesitated, her hand resting on the door to the Archives. She could sense wards of some kind guarding the place now—was she beginning to develop her lineage’s powers of _seeing,_ that she could tell? But they wouldn’t keep her out. They seemed prime to thwart hostile intruders only, and if anything the magic curled around her in recognition. _Welcome home._

And yet. It was September 2017, more than a year after her supposed death. She’d tried to get the TARDIS to take her closer, but the ship had refused. Apparently she had to pay for every day she’d spent traveling through time and space with a day spent away from Sleepy Hollow. Time enough for Crane to have gone through all the stages of mourning and moved on with his life. 

She couldn’t blame him if he was furious with her for delaying her return. If he didn’t believe it was truly her. If she was an unwanted reminder of a past he’d buried. If he was _married_ now, in happy newlywed bliss with the new Witness.

Now all she had to do was walk through that door and face whatever awaited her. She closed her eyes, murmured a prayer to whoever might be listening, then stepped back into the life she’d left behind.

Oh God. Crane. Seated at a table bent over a book with that dear intent look on his face. His hair grown long enough to tie back again. Long fingers tapping a pen against a notebook. So beloved. How had she ever stayed away so long?

He wasn’t alone, though. A woman sat beside him, looking every bit at home there. An elegant woman, a little darker than Abbie and much taller, with close-cropped graying hair and an air of serene, matronly dignity. Abbie guessed her to be fifty, give or take a few years.

Both of them looked up at the sound of the door. Crane went deathly pale, wide-eyed, his mouth falling open.

All her rehearsed speeches failed her. “Hey, Crane.”

“Abbie…good God.” He sprang up, knocking over his chair, and closed the space between them in a few quick strides, but stopped short of touching her. “How…what…is this…are you…?”

She blinked hard, but couldn’t stop the tears from leaking onto her cheeks. “It’s really me. I—I didn’t die that day. I’ve been traveling ever since. I tried to come back sooner but I couldn’t, and…” Her words ran out, and she just stared up at him, not even trying not to sob anymore.

He stretched out a cautious hand, stroked her hair, rested his palm against her cheek. She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch.

“Oh, God, you’re real.” And Abbie huffed out a startled breath to find herself hauled against his chest, his big long arms pressing her against him. She wound her arms around his waist, inhaled his familiar scent, and felt his shuddering breaths. He was sobbing, too.

“I’m so sorry,” she told his shirt front. “I should’ve come sooner, but with my Witness-soul gone, I didn’t know—”

He eased back a little, just enough to take her face between his hands and make her look at him. “Abbie. Lieutenant. You’re here. You’re alive. It’s all right.” Bending his head, he brushed his lips over her cheeks, kissing her tears away. She arched up on tiptoe, and then their mouths met and clung in a desperate kiss.

Yes. She was home now. If only she’d realized before…but no more time for _if only._ They were here now, together now, and nothing else mattered.

“Ahem. Crane. _Ichabod.”_

Abbie had almost forgotten they weren’t alone. She broke the kiss and tried to step away, but Crane held her close.

“Let me make sure she’s what she seems,” the woman said, her voice wary yet firm.

“You think I wouldn’t know?” Crane growled. “This is Abbie.”

“Crane, it’s OK.” Abbie set her palms against his chest and gently pushed free. “I’d have my doubts too, under the circumstances.”

The woman—the new Witness, Abbie assumed—surveyed her coolly. Those eyes—she thought of their shared ancestress in Timbuktu, the more so when this woman brushed her hand along Abbie’s cheek. After a moment, she nodded. “You _have_ traveled far.” She stepped back and offered her hand for Abbie to shake. “Naomi Dixon-Lawrence. Your third cousin once removed. It’s a pleasure—an unexpected one!—to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you, this past year.”

“The Reverend Dixon-Lawrence,” Crane added.

She laughed and shook her head. “Please. Pastor Naomi, unless I’m at General Convention or the bishop is in town.”

“She came to Christ Church as the new rector about a month after you…didn’t die,” Crane added. “When I met her, I knew she was the new Witness.”

“I’m glad to meet you, too,” Abbie managed.

Naomi smiled. Now that her suspicions had been put to rest, she was warm and generous. “It certainly added unexpected complications to my vocation. But I can see you two have a lot of catching up to do.” She stooped to grab a purse from under the table and slung it over her shoulder. “Dinner at seven,” she said, “I’ll have Dennis set an extra place.” And with a little wave, she stepped out the door.

When it clicked closed behind her, Abbie and Crane stared at each other in silence for the space of a heartbeat or two before plunging back into each other’s arms.

“I was so afraid,” she gasp when he left her lips to trail kisses along her neck, “that we wouldn’t—ah!—have a bond, if I came back.”

Now he drew back and frowned bewilderment. “Why?”

“I—I thought everything you felt for me, everything I realized too late I felt for you, all our connection, might just be because of the Witness-soul. Like maybe it wasn’t _our_ bond after all.”

He leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers. “Oh, Lieutenant. I’m glad you had the Witness-soul for a time, for I never would’ve met you without it, but I love you with all my human heart. Nothing more or less mystical than that.”

Her eyes stung again, and she pulled him down for another kiss. She’d thought it would be so awkward, seeing each other again after so long, but she couldn’t have been more wrong. They’d thought they’d lost each other forever, and now that they were together again, all was clear.

“Abbie,” he said when they came up for air, “I know there’s so much we must discuss, but just now, I—” He shook his head and captured her lips in a quick, searing kiss.

She stroked his cheek. “I need you too.”

“If you’re certain…”

“God, yes.”

And then, no more words, nothing but gasps and sighs and seeking hands as they reclaimed their bond and forged it into something yet stronger. Abbie was beyond joy and sorrow, almost beyond thought—just pure need and hunger.

After he braced her against the wall and thrust into her for the first time, he froze. “Abbie,” he gasped.

She tightened her legs around his hips. “I know.”

“You’re _here._ You’re _alive.”_

Their racing breaths mingled, and his pulse beat against her fingertips where one hand rested where his shoulder met his throat. He filled her senses, her heart, her body. “Never more alive.”

“You’ll stay?”

She nodded, pressed her forehead against his. “Yeah. Will you?”

“For as long as I live.”

A smile tugged at her lips. “That’s settled, then.” She rocked her hips, insistently, and he responded with a ragged laugh and an urgent thrust.

After, they were still too busy touching—embracing, kissing, generally assuring themselves of the other’s living and loving presence—to talk at first. But at last they were fully dressed, still touching but calm now, with Abbie curled in Crane’s lap in the most comfortable chair the room offered.

“You said you’d been traveling,” Crane began. “I hope…it wasn’t the Catacombs again, or Purgatory, or anything of the sort. You said you’d tried to come sooner, but you couldn’t.”

“It wasn’t like that,” she assured him. “I was safe. Happy, most of the time. Free, and seeing wonderful things. I was just—afraid to come home. Afraid I wouldn’t have a place anymore.”

“Abbie. Lieutenant.” His voice took on a rasp, and his grip tightened at her waist. “You will always have a place here. Come what may.”

“I _am_ a lieutenant again, by the way,” she said. “Officially. Heard a lot more people saying it your way, too.”

“Wait, where were you? England?”

“Among other places.”

“What the devil happened?”

“It’s hard to explain. It’ll sound impossible.”

“More so than a man who died in 1781 waking up well and whole in 2013?” He raised an eyebrow, and she swiftly kissed it.

“I missed that look,” she explained. “While I was traveling through space and time with a 900-year-old alien.”

He blinked. “Ah. Of course you were. And how did that come to pass?”

“You believe me? Just like that?”

“Why wouldn’t I? You’ve never been in the habit of deceiving me. And I also trust your intelligence sufficiently that if you were lying, you would tell a more plausible tale.”

She laughed. “Thanks. On both counts.” And she explained how the TARDIS had rescued her at the last moment before Pandora’s Box could claim her life along with the Witness-soul and her decision to travel with the Doctor.

“I just needed to _go_ for awhile,” she tried to explain. “I think…I still wasn’t all the way over my PTSD from the first time in the Catacombs. I was just so damn exhausted, and I didn’t even know what would happen if I came back. But I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left you and Jenny thinking I was dead.”

His brows drew together in a slight frown. “Perhaps I’ll be furious about that in due course, but just now I’m too glad to have you alive and here to do anything but rejoice. And I cannot forget that not so long ago I went nine months without communicating with you, and for far less cause.”

“I don’t know about less cause,” she said. No matter how much his marriage had broken down by the end, stabbing your own wife to death wasn’t the kind of thing any sane and decent person could just shrug off. “And besides, I had no reason to think you were dead.”

He pressed his lips to her forehead. “I propose mutual forgiveness, on the condition that neither of us runs away from the other again.”

Abbie was sure they’d both have to work to fully rebuild their mutual trust once the initial bliss and relief of reunion wore off…but it was a good promise to start from. “Deal.” She offered her hand for a handshake, and he took it and raised it to his lips.

“So tell me,” he said, “where your journeys through time and space took you, and how it is that you’re a lieutenant again? It doesn’t sound as though you think it a demotion.”

“More starting over on a new path,” she confirmed, “and I want to tell you all of it, but shouldn’t we call Jenny? And…my dad, of course.” She’d only barely made contact with him before all this, and it still felt weird to think of him as someone she needed to notify. “They’re both OK, I hope.”

“Miss Jenny is well, the last I heard, though she’s been traveling constantly since you and Joe—well, since Joe. I believe she is in Nepal, at present. Perhaps it would be best to send a text that she should call me urgently as soon as she can, and leave the rest for when she’s awake and can find a sufficient signal.”

“Yeah—it might be a little much all at once to lead with _Hi, your sister isn’t dead.”_

He closed his eyes, and his hands tightened on her, as if testing her reality yet again, but then he pulled out his phone, tapped out a text, and offered it for her approval before hitting send.

“And my dad?” she prompted.

“Ah.” His eyes grew distant and troubled. “I’m sorry to say that we became freshly estranged a few months after your death. Disappearance.”

She smiled despite herself. Eventually they’d figure out how to talk about it. “What happened?” she asked.

“He revealed that he and certain others—Daniel Reynolds, among them—were associated with a sort of shadow government whose mission was to deal with matters apocalyptic and supernatural. It was established by Washington himself, doubtless with the greatest of intentions—”

“But we all know what paves the road to hell.”

“Precisely. It quickly became apparent to the Reverend Naomi and me that we were expected to take orders from this so-called government, one that as best as we could discern had no connection to the actual elected government. Indeed, until we made them aware of it, they had no notion of its existence.”

“Wait, what?”

“Washington’s intent was that each president tell his successor as he passed the office along, but we can only suppose the chain must have broken at some point, perhaps when a president died in office. The Reverend suspects it was at the assassination of President McKinley, and even that the shadow government may have been behind that murder, since it was around the turn of the twentieth century that their actions became, shall we say, yet more shadowy.”

“More shadowy,” Abbie echoed.

Crane nodded. “We have discovered that they are willing to use demonic powers and dark magics to their own ends, for the sake of extending American power by any means necessary.”

“So I gather you’re not taking orders from them anymore.”

“We are not.”

“But you’re still safe here? Out in the open like this?”

“Well, the Reverend has a knack for casting wards and other beneficent magic, so we are able to be safe here and in our own homes from most threats.”

“I noticed them at the door. They…seemed to like me.”

“Of course they would. And for the rest—let us say that after we informed the president that there was an agency ostensibly a part of her government, though neither she nor any of her predecessors in living memory had been told of its existence, and that said agency was carrying out policies she found abhorrent, without any oversight that could be called of the people, by the people, or for the people, why, then, she called upon such considerable resources as were answerable to her orders. Due to their efforts, what remains of the shadow government has gone deeply underground, and fugitive.”

“Ah. Including my father?”

“Yes. We pleaded with him to leave, to see his allies for what they were, but he was a true believer.”

Abbie shook her head. It was too much to take in at once. “Was?” she asked. 

“Was and is. At least, to the best of our knowledge, he is yet living. He’s made no attempt to contact me, nor Miss Jenny, so far as I know.”

Abbie supposed she should feel grief or anger, but the strongest emotion she could muster was consternation. She’d grown used to doing without a father, and he’d been back in her life so briefly before _she’d_ left all of it behind. “Wow. Guess it would’ve been better if he’d stayed out of our lives.”

“Perhaps. Or, perhaps now that you are restored to us, we might make another attempt at his redemption.”

She bit her lip. Sometimes family wasn’t a strong enough tie. If Ezra Mills had been willing to abandon his daughters to the system when they were just kids, could they really expect him to forsake his chosen cause for their sakes now? “Maybe. But we don’t have to decide that today. I’m not ready.”

“Wholly understandable.”

“Although…” She frowned at him in sudden worry. “I hope you’re not so turned off on the idea of secret government agencies that you don’t believe they can do good. I promise the president knows about this one, at least.”

“Ah, yes. Just what are you a lieutenant of now, my Abbie?”

She explained UNIT, and how she’d ended up on their staff. “My appointment starts a month from now.” Kate Stewart, well aware that the TARDIS’s timing could be less than precise, had given Abbie a letter of introduction to the Manhattan division that gave her a start date 30 days from the point she presented it to her new employers. “Gives me time to get my affairs in order, settle back down.”

Now it was Crane’s turn for a worried frown. “As to that, I’m afraid…we sold your house.”

She blinked. She hadn’t expected anything else. She’d loved that house, thought of herself as putting down roots when she bought it…but she’d missed the chance to keep it when she’d stayed away so long. “I understand.” Her will had split her property between Crane and Jenny, and it wasn’t as if they could’ve shared the place. “Where do you live now?”

“I have an apartment. It isn’t much…but I didn’t want much. Still, I hope—I would be honored to have you stay with me.” 

“That’s exactly what I want. Though, if you’re not too attached to it, we could look for something new together. Maybe just rent for now, until I’m sure UNIT is going to work out for me. If it ever goes corrupt, I’ll have to ask your advice on how to bring it down from the inside.”

“I shall hope such advice is never needed. And I am delighted you’ve found so auspicious a post for your new life.”

“So am I.” They sat together for several long moments, snuggled in contented silence. “Oh!” Abbie said, remembering. “I have pictures.”

They spent the next hour poring over her phone’s camera roll. Crane was suitably impressed with mastodons, pyramids, aliens, and nebulae, and his eyes gleamed with flattering appreciation over certain of her selfies.

“I don’t suppose you still have any of those dresses,” he commented after lingering over the Egyptian gown.

Abbie grinned. “I still need to pick up my things for the TARDIS, but yeah. I’d be happy to model them for you.”

“I shall look forward to it with great anticipation…and are you saying that this TARDIS of yours is still here?”

“Yeah—the Doctor promised to wait at least a day to make sure I wanted to stay.” She checked the time. “I’ll show you now. We’ve got over an hour till dinner.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Crane meets the Doctor...

The Doctor had parked the TARDIS in a quiet, wooded corner of a little city park along the Hudson. When Abbie led Crane there, they found him seated just outside it in the late afternoon sunshine, contemplating the river. He stood at their approach and looked them over—taking in at a glance, she was sure, their tightly clasped hands with interlocked fingers, the way they leaned into each other as soon as they came to a stop.

“I see you’ll be staying, then,” he said.

Abbie nodded. “Yes.”

He returned a short nod of his own. “Good.” And yet she could tell he was just a little wistful. She’d need to talk to him about that.

But meanwhile, she introduced Crane, noting with some amusement the way both tall men stood their tallest and narrowed their pretty blue eyes at each other in pure masculine posturing. Boys would be boys, even if one of them was a 900-year-old alien and the other was a time traveler of a different kind, either 35 or 266 depending how you did the math, and even though both of them knew damn well they didn’t need to compete over her.

“Thank you—” Crane began.

“If you say, _thank you for taking care of her…”_ she muttered in warning.

He squeezed her hand. “I know you can take care of yourself. But may I thank him for saving your life?”

She smiled. “Yeah, I’m pretty grateful for that myself.”

The Doctor shrugged, managing to look simultaneously complacent and self-deprecating. “Oh, that was the TARDIS’s doing. I was along for the ride on that journey. But we’ve managed to save each other’s lives more than once along the way since then—not to mention a world or two.”

“Just what good companions do,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed, suddenly serious. “So, some parting words for the both of you—take care of each other. Since I don’t get the sense either of you means to settle down and enjoy a quiet life in a country cottage anytime soon.”

“If we attempted it, I’m sure the demons would come to us,” Crane said ruefully.

“Or the aliens,” she added.

“Why don’t you come to dinner with us before you go?” Crane said abruptly. “That is—if you eat the same food as we do.”

“Oh, he does,” Abbie said. “Worst fry thief I’ve ever seen.”

Leaning against Crane’s side, she felt his chuckle rumble through his body. “Is that so? Have you never looked in a mirror?”

As she mock-shoved him, the Doctor said, “Dinner sounds lovely, but I don’t like to impose.”

“You won’t be,” Crane assured him. “I’ll call ahead, of course, but the Reverend won’t mind, and I know it won’t be any trouble—now that both their sons are in college, Dennis always cooks too much.”

He stepped away to make the phone call, and Abbie filled the Doctor in. “The Reverend is Naomi—the new Witness.”

“And you clearly have no problem with that.”

“The happily married new Witness who’s fifteen or twenty years older than Crane if you don’t count the years he was dead. Not that a decade or two would seem like anything to you.” Not for the first time, she marveled that the Doctor wasn’t even stranger than he was. Compared to him, humans might as well be mayflies, and yet he kept befriending them anyway.

He chose to ignore her comment on his age. “See. You made the right choice.”

“It would’ve been the right choice anyway. This is my home.” Even if all her worst fears had come true, if without the Witness-soul to bind them together Crane had been only a friendly acquaintance, if the new Witness had been his true soulmate…she still belonged here. Well, maybe if that had happened, she would’ve looked for a place in Manhattan. Shorter commute to work, farther away from the man she would’ve had to try to forget. But as much as she’d enjoyed her time on the TARDIS, she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life traveling the galaxy, nor even the world. (Well, maybe some of the world. In all her time with the Doctor, they’d never made it to New Zealand or Japan, just to name two places she’d always been curious about. Maybe she and Crane could go someday, demon-and-alien fighting duties permitting.) She wanted a home, roots, a specific territory that was hers to defend.

“I can see that,” the Doctor replied. “Still—I’m happy to see you this happy.”

Abbie searched for the right words to suggest that he not travel alone for any length of time, but before she could find them Crane returned with assurances that the Reverend said the more the merrier. And so they all ended up eating big plates of spaghetti and meatballs at the creaky but well-maintained home Naomi shared with her husband Dennis—a quiet, mellow man who seemed a little bemused by the turn their lives had taken since their arrival in Sleepy Hollow. “I’m a dentist,” he told Abbie. “When I married a minister, I figured I’d have some dealings with spiritual matters…but Episcopalians don’t typically wrestle with demons.”

“Now, dear, I don’t wrestle. I leave that for the youngsters.” Naomi smiled serenely as she passed a platter of garlic bread to Abbie and Crane. “Besides, I find that prayer, a little beneficial magic, and timely application of holy water is much more effective.”

Abbie grinned. She could tell she and Naomi were going to get along just fine.

“And I certainly wasn’t expecting snake handling,” Dennis added.

“Wait, what?” Abbie asked.

Crane launched into a tale of a recent encounter with a demon in serpentine form—“quite twenty feet long, all white with eyes the orange of fire and fangs as long as my hand”—which the Doctor promptly topped with a story about a yet larger snake-like alien—“and this one could shoot poisonous spines from its tail!”

Naomi caught Abbie’s eye. “Just like when Dennis and his partner down at the clinic go out to the lake. It’s all about who catches the biggest fish.”

After dessert—brownies and ice cream, both homemade—Abbie ended up in the kitchen with Naomi, loading the dishwasher while Crane and the Doctor cleared the table and Dennis, as the cook, escaped clean-up duty and settled himself in front of the TV for the Thursday night college football game. The two women fell into a standard getting-to-know-each-other conversation. Abbie was questioning Naomi about her two sons, one a senior at Howard, and the other a freshman at NYU, when Crane came in with a stack of plates, set them on the counter, took Abbie by the shoulders, and placed a hard kiss on the top of her head before heading back toward the dining room.

Naomi smiled. “I’m so glad you came back. For your own sake most of all, of course—but for Crane, too. I’ve known him over a year now, and I’ve never seen him truly happy before today.”

Abbie’s eyes stung. “I should’ve come back sooner.”

“No, you had your own journey you needed to complete. If you’ll let me talk church for a moment, you needed to discover your vocation for yourself. Sometimes that means a quest.”

She hadn’t thought of it that way, but she _had_ found herself out there in the wilds of space and time, who she was when no one else was imposing a duty or a destiny upon her. “Maybe you’re right.”

“You both survived, and now you’ll have the rest of your lives together to look forward to.” She chuckled softly. “Dennis and I were going to offer you one of the spare bedrooms while you get settled back in to your life—we have so much space now that the boys are both gone—but I get the sense there’s no separating you from him.”

“Nope. Too much lost time to make up for.”

“Don’t worry about lost time. Savor where you are now.”

It was Abbie’s turn to laugh. “Yes, Preacher.”

Abbie, Crane, and the Doctor declined Naomi and Dennis’s invitation to stay for the football game and walked back toward the TARDIS through the cool of the early fall evening. By now the two men had recognized each other as kindred spirits of a sort and were amiably swapping war stories.

“Plenty of room in the TARDIS, you know,” the Doctor said as they arrived back at the by-now dear and familiar police box. “No reason I can’t travel with two companions.”

Abbie and Crane exchanged a look. He envied her travels, she knew—he was far too curious by nature not to—but he was even more duty-bound to this place and time than she was.

“We have work to do here and now,” she said for both of them. “But…maybe a short journey?” She leaned into Crane’s shoulder. “If you could go one place…”

“Only the one…” His brows narrowed in concentration. “You said one couldn’t revisit your own past to change it. What if you only wish to observe?”

“Possible,” the Doctor said. “But dangerous. You’ll be tempted to interfere.”

“Not if the moment I choose is too happy to admit of any changes.”

And so they found themselves on a hillside in England on a green summer day sometime in the 1750’s, watching from a distance as a very young Crane rode his first pony, to the applause of his mother and the quieter approval of his father. Then, for a bonus, the Doctor took them to a spot somewhere between Earth and the moon and let them just gaze at the Earth, a blue jewel shot with green and white set in the vast blackness of space.

“That,” Crane pronounced, “is truly awesome—in the sense that my century used that word.”

“I’ve seen a great many planets over the years,” the Doctor said, “but few more beautiful. Well, then. Let’s take you two home.”

They landed back where they’d started. Crane and the Doctor shook hands, and Crane excused himself to wait a polite distance away while Abbie made her farewells.

“I’ll miss you,” the Doctor said. “It’s been fantastic.”

“It really has.” They exchanged rather goofy smiles. “I—I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to travel alone for long. You should find someone. Maybe see if the TARDIS has anyone else in mind.”

“There was a girl, just before I met you. Brave and clever, and longing for adventure. Maybe if I ask her again…I forgot to tell her it travels through time.”

“That is a key selling point,” Abbie agreed. “You should do that. And—I hope you’ll visit us when you can.”

“I will. I might not look the same, but I reckon you’ll know me. Good luck, Abigail Mills.”

“Safe journeys, Doctor.” They shared a fierce farewell hug, then he stepped into the TARDIS alone and shut the door.

Abbie ran to Crane and stood in the circle of his arms as they watched the TARDIS hum to life and fade from view.

As soon as it was wholly gone, she twisted to face him and pulled his head down for a kiss. She was home to stay.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Abbie sees how Crane has been living in her absence, and they get a phone call from Jenny on the other side of the world.

Crane’s apartment was in a dreary 1970’s-era complex only just on the good side of the line between shabby and downright seedy. He’d done nothing to make his tiny one-bedroom unit cozy or homelike, either—it was all bare white walls, worn industrial brown carpet, and furniture that looked like it belonged in a college dorm lounge. The only things that made the combined kitchen-dining-living area _Crane_ were the piles of books and papers, covering the tiny, rickety dining table and beat-up coffee table. And…there along the windowsill…

She crossed to the window and blinked down at the little row of flowerpots. Cautiously, she stroked a stiff, spiky leaf. “You kept the cactuses.”

Crane stood just behind her, warm and solid, resting one hand on her shoulder while with the other he drew closed the threadbare beige curtains. “They were…something we’d shared. Something I could keep alive.”

Oh God…to think of him all by himself here in this bleak place, grieving over books and cactuses. Her eyes stung, she shuddered from head to toe, and then they were both crying, locked tight in each other’s arms. Yet they were together now, and these were good tears—a shedding of sadness, a commitment to hold onto each other no matter what.

When they were calm they collapsed onto the couch. She leaned into his side, and he wrapped his arm around her, his hand curled at her hipbone.

“Most of the furniture came with the apartment,” he said. “What few other items I absolutely required, I bought at Target. I know it’s…rather dire.”

“We can look for a new place together as soon as tomorrow, if you want,” she said. “But really, I just want to be wherever you are.”

“Miss Jenny has some of your things in storage, the keepsakes and family heirlooms, at least. All the rest was sold or donated, I’m afraid.”

“Of course it was. Crane, it doesn’t matter. I understand. It’s just stuff, in the end. We can pick out new things. Together.”

“Together.” He spoke the word like a vow and hauled her into his lap for a kiss. When she twisted to kneel astride him, he murmured, “Bed,” then scooped her up and carried her to the bedroom.

The room was tiny—just barely big enough for a double bed, a dresser, and a bedside table—but Abbie didn’t care. All that mattered was Crane, setting her gently down on the creaky mattress, looming over her before lowering his mouth to hers in a kiss that started out soft and reverent. Slowly, steadily, his lips turned hungry and questing, and she responded in kind, pushing his coat off his shoulders, winding her legs around his hips. But their caresses stayed slow and deliberate, even solemn—until the brush of his fingers against her side was just a little too light, and she giggled.

He blinked at her.

“Sorry. That tickles.”

One eyebrow shot up, and his eyes took on a mischievous sparkle. “Oh, does it?” Just like that, their solemn vow-sex turned into a giddy bout of tickling, mock-wrestling, and pillow fighting. And God, but they needed that too—laughing and playfulness and _healing._

But when she came close to falling off the bed and he caught her, she took his face between her hands and kissed him hard, and things turned intense again. Until, right after he unhooked her bra, they both jumped as his phone rang.

“Damn and blast,” he muttered, reaching for his pocket. “Let me silence this thing.”

“Crane. What if it’s Jenny?”

He blinked at the screen. “It is.”

Abbie edged away from him and tried to steady her breathing, to turn her focus from lover to family as Crane fumbled with the phone, clearly battling for control of his own.

“Miss Jenny!” He switched the display to speakerphone. “You got my text.”

“I did. Freaked me out, too. What the hell is going on? You said it was _surprising and important.”_

Oh, Jenny. The same impatient, impassioned Jenny she’d always been. Abbie’s eyes stung with tears for what had to be at least the tenth time that day as she scrambled to refasten her bra and tried to figure out just where the hell her shirt had ended up.

“Yes,” Crane said. “Are you seated?”

A faint rustle and creaking. “Now I am. So tell me what’s so important that you have to text me from halfway around the world.”

Abbie couldn’t take it anymore. “Hey, Jenny. Turns out the reports of my death were exaggerated.”

“What?” It came out as a screech. “Crane. What the _hell?”_

“It’s _Abbie._ She’s alive.”

“No. It can’t be. It’s been a year and a half! You don’t just come back from the dead like that.”

“But I was never dead.” Ah, there was the shirt. She snatched it from where it had fallen on the floor and tugged it over her head.

“And even if she had been, _I_ came back after almost two and a half _centuries.”_

Abbie couldn’t hold back a chuckle. Her dear, pedantic Crane.

He gave her a small, reassuring smile, then raised an eyebrow in inquiry, his finger hovering over the face time button. She nodded. “Here, I’ll show you,” he said.

She leaned in to make sure the camera was picking her up as her sister’s image came into focus. It had to be early in the morning there. Jenny’s hair was bound up in a scarf, and she wore a loose black tank top. 

“Jenny.” Abbie battled to steady her voice. “Damn, but it’s good to see your face. You doing OK?”

_“Abbie?”_ She shut her eyes and shook her head. “No. Impossible.” Her eyes flew open again, and she frowned. “Wait, that’s Ichy’s bedroom, isn’t it?”

Crane shifted, and Abbie heaved out a sigh. “Really? Are you going to judge us for that?”

“For all I know you’re some kind of succubus,” Jenny snapped. “That’s more likely than my sister coming back from the grave.”

“I was never in a grave!”

Crane slid his free hand to the small of her back. She leaned into the gentle, reassuring pressure and took a deep breath. God, some things never changed, and apparently bickering with her sister was one of them. But she could understand why Jenny couldn’t just let herself believe, and it had to be harder over a phone connection than in the flesh. “Jenny,” she said. “Halloween, 1992. I was a mermaid and you were a lioness. You stole all the M&Ms out of my bag in the middle of the night and ate them until you threw up. Christmas, 1994. We wanted a Nintendo, but we got a dollhouse for me and a Candy Land game for you. I could go on. Do you want me to tell Crane about that middle school dance you went to with Kyle Hernandez?”

“No! You _will_ be in a grave this time if you breathe a word.” Jenny laughed, just on the edge of hysteria. “Abbie! It’s _you._ What happened? How did you survive?”

“Would you believe I was saved at the last second by an alien with a spaceship-slash-time-machine? Because that’s what happened.”

Jenny’s eyes rounded. “I guess…that’s not much weirder than anything else in our lives. Oh my God, Abbie. I missed you.”

Abbie wiped a tear from her eye. “Missed you, too.”

“Look, I’m coming home as soon as I can, and you have to tell me everything.”

“I promise.”

“Good. This—this is amazing. I wish I didn’t, but I’ve got to go meet a contact about a statue I’m trying to buy before Dad and his friends can get their hands on it, but I love you, OK?”

“Love you, too. See you soon.”

Crane set the phone on the bedside table, and he and Abbie smiled at each other. “Now, where were we?” she asked.

He pulled her into his lap and reached for her shirt hem. “Someplace like this, I believe.”

Abbie had never had a more deliciously sleepless night.


	8. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein I give these characters every bit of happiness I want them to have, because part of the beauty of fanfic is writing the kind of ending *I* think is right.

_June 2019_

Their wedding was traditional, mostly. Sure, they’d been living together for nearly two years now, for the past six months in their own home they’d bought together—a colonial house, built over a decade before Crane’s birth, but thoroughly renovated with the best of twenty-first century wiring and plumbing. A perfect blend of old and new. Like them.

But last night Crane had stayed at Naomi and Dennis’s house so they could keep up the tradition of the groom not seeing the bride before she stepped into the church on their wedding day. Now she stood poised in the church door, alone. She had no father or father figure left she wanted to walk her down the aisle, and she didn’t need anyone to give her in marriage. She’d give herself, and receive equal measure in return from Crane.

She kept her eyes fixed on him as she walked down the aisle. His eyes widened with flattering awe as she approached, and she grinned at him. She’d admired herself in the mirror just a few minutes ago, so she knew just how flattering her elegant, close-fitting ivory satin dress was. He was looking his handsomest himself, his best colonial suit—a new one in dark blue, purchased from a tailor he’d discovered at a reenactment—just as formal and more suited to him than any tux could be.

She still couldn’t believe they’d made it to this moment, though she supposed it had been inevitable since her return. They’d first spoken of it within a few weeks, while they were still sharing Crane’s tiny apartment. It would’ve been easy to go down to the courthouse, or to have Naomi marry them quietly some weekday afternoon in this very church. It would have been simpler that way. But Abbie, to her own surprise, had wanted something different.

“I think I want…an actual wedding,” she’d said, frowning bafflement at her own words. “The whole thing. Long white dress, organ playing, everyone who knows us there on a June Saturday afternoon. So I can stand up in front of the whole world and say, _My man._ ”

“Then a wedding you shall have.” And his eyes had shone in a way that told her he wanted that big public commitment too.

“Just so you don’t mind living in sin with me in the meantime,” she’d added anxiously. “Since we’ll need to save up for it, and these things take time to plan.”

He’d pulled her atop him where they lay together in bed. “ _This?_ Far too right to be a sin.”

And now, here she was, walking down the aisle of a surprisingly full church. Their world had grown, these past two years. Her colleagues from UNIT filled several pews toward the back—if any demons or aliens threatened this day of celebration, they ought to have all the artillery they needed to fight them off. Many of her coworkers already knew Crane, too. Not long after her return, the president had restarted Washington’s shadowy agency for supernatural and apocalyptic matters, only this time her vice president knew about it as well, along with a few select cabinet members and heads of congressional committees. Checks and balances, to keep everyone honest. Crane led the group, and his remit overlapped just enough with Abbie’s that UNIT knew him as the president’s special consultant for the most arcane and unexpected threats to national security.

Also among their smiling guests were Crane’s friends from the local reenactment group, some of her high school and college friends she’d reconnected to over the past few years, and practically everyone from the police department who’d been there long enough to remember her. All in all, for a couple with almost no close blood relations they were speaking to—Jenny, who’d proceeded her up the aisle as maid of honor was it—they’d managed to find the family they needed. Though she’d been hoping a certain blue box would show up...

When she reached Crane’s side, he murmured, “Beautiful,” and reached for her hand. Naomi, dressed in her fanciest vestments of white trimmed with gold, smiled beatifically at them both and began.

_Dearly beloved: We have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony…_

Her rich voice rippled through the opening blessing. When she reached the line about marriage being intended for the procreation of children, should that be God’s will, Abbie gave Crane’s hand the tiniest of squeezes. They hadn’t told anyone else yet about the positive pregnancy test from just three mornings ago, but Crane was already suggesting names. (Grace for a daughter, which Abbie agreed with, and George for a son, which she did not.) So far she was mostly just amazed and a little terrified to think that if everything went right, in about eight months they’d be parents, that two people like them could do anything so ordinary yet significant as bring a child into the world. But when she imagined Crane holding their tiny baby in his big hands, singing sea shanties and patriotic songs the rest of the world had long since forgotten for lullabies…then she could hardly wait.

The ceremony continued. They promised to love, comfort, and keep each other in sickness and in health. Naomi prayed and read scripture… _And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love._

When the time came to exchange rings, as Abbie turned to pass her bouquet of red roses to Jenny to hold, out of the corner of her eye she spotted two guests slipping into the back pew. A lanky young man in a suit, tie, and sneakers, accompanied by a blond young woman in a red dress. Turned out the Doctor had been right—Abbie recognized him right away in his new form. Trust a Time Lord to be late to a wedding. She’d have _words_ with him at the reception.

Now she took Crane’s hands and they exchanged rings, simple matching gold bands engraved on the inside with their initials and the date. Naomi pronounced them husband and wife, but wouldn’t let them kiss—yet. Instead she had them kneel for a blessing.

_…Defend them from every enemy. Lead them into all peace. Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads. Bless them in their work and in their companionship; in their sleeping and in their waking; in their joys and in their sorrows; in their life and in their death. Finally, in your mercy, bring them to that table where your saints feast for ever in your heavenly home._

With the blessing completed, she beckoned them to their feet. “And now, you may kiss your bride.”

So Crane swept Abbie into his arms, and they kissed to the cheers of their assembled friends.

Later, at the reception, while Crane was engrossed in conversation with the head of the historical society about how marriage customs had changed over the past few centuries, Abbie made her way to the far side of the ballroom, where the Doctor and his new companion were talking shop with some of the UNIT staff.

“Time traveler, late to a wedding,” she said by way of greeting.

“Abigail Mills!” He grinned, looking even more exuberant than _her_ Doctor had at his very giddiest. “Or is it Crane now?”

She smiled back. “Mills-Crane.” The names were short enough to hyphenate without sounding unwieldy, and they’d both decided to go that route. She’d been surprised when Crane had chosen to change his name, too, but he had informed her—pedantically, of course—that hyphenated names dated back to his era, at least when a man married into a particularly important family.

“Sorry I was late,” the Doctor said cheerfully, “but you know how the TARDIS can be sometimes.”

“Don’t let him blame the TARDIS.” His companion rolled her eyes in fond exasperation. “He went to the wrong church. I told him I didn’t think the Church of Christ and Christ Church were the same thing, but would he listen?”

“Honest mistake,” he protested. “How many churches does one town need?”

The young woman extended her hand to Abbie. “Rose Tyler. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise.” They seemed happy together, this Companion and this Doctor. “And I’m so glad you both could be here.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it,” the Doctor proclaimed.

Rose elbowed him. “Except by stubbornly waiting half an hour for anyone to show up at the _wrong church._ ”

Abbie was still laughing as shed headed back toward Crane for their first dance. She was glad they’d all reached this—she couldn’t call it a happy _ending,_ because this day was the beginning of too many things. Her marriage, the secret new life she carried, the hope for a whole long stretch of decades of everything she’d thought she was giving up when Pandora’s Box had claimed her. Love and family and belonging, and doing important work in the world, work that she was damn good at. And it was a midpoint, too, a moment. Who knew how many more regenerations the Doctor would have, or what Rose’s destiny would prove to be? And for her and Crane, this was just one moment in the journey they’d been on together from the day they’d met—a companionship for as long as their lives lasted, and maybe even beyond, at that heavenly feast from the wedding blessing.

But for now she couldn’t ask for a better moment than stepping onto the dance floor hand in hand with her new husband. Happy now, and ready for the ever after.


End file.
